Plane crashes into Tampa office tower

[Nic Name]

I agree with everything in Whit's post.

Furthermore, Bishop is no less a terrorist because, in the result, he was less effective and only killed himself. And he's a terrorist whether he acted alone, or not.

If Bishop had crashed his plane into MacDill AFB, he'd be on par with the attackers on the Pentagon. If he had crashed his plane into either the Delta or Southwest airliners in the vicinity, he would have caused much more death and disruption of the airline industry, generally on par with the Pennsylvania crash.

I think Bishop chose to be a terrorist. Surely he was misguided or self-deluded. I think Bishop sought infamy by targetting the Bank of America Building because his perception was that the attacks on the WTC were where all the notoriety was focused by the media.

I don't think Bishop's attack should be viewed as a suicide, at all. There is no indication that he was suicidal, that he wanted to end his life. Quite the contrary. The Al Qaeda hijackers were not committing suicide. Their deaths were necessarily incidental to their acts. In their minds martyrdom, sacrifice not suicide. So too, Bishop. He didn't want to die. He wanted to make a statement. Living through the event was not important. Sacrificing one's life is believed by martyrs to add emphasis to their statements ... but death was not his objective.

Terrorism was. I think Bishop wanted to join in the terrorism, if not join with the terrorists. I think he might also have been confused about his middle eastern ancestry. I suspect the evidence is in the note ... and that's why we are not seeing it. In the famous line from A Few Good Men, a movie about Gitmo, the government believes, you can't handle the truth.